A ‘Constellation’ of Light Above the Ruins of Bannerman Castle

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Melissa McGill's "Constellation" is a series of lights that "hover" over the ruins of the Bannerman castle ruins on an island on the Hudson River. June 17, 2015.CreditCreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times

POLLEPEL ISLAND, N.Y. — As the small aluminum workboat made a wide turn in the Hudson River, the decaying ruins of Bannerman Castle came into view, a dark tangle of tumbledown brick, concrete, scrap metal and weeds that was only partly illuminated on a sunny day last month.

The artist Melissa McGill was onboard, watching as a foundry crew began installing her artwork “Constellation” on this tiny island, just south of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge in the Hudson Valley.

Two towering metal poles were planted, the first of 17 ranging from 40 to 80 feet high. Each has a glass globe, and starting on Sunday at dusk, they will twinkle on, for two hours, every night for the next two years. An airborne installation designed to tread lightly on the landscape, “Constellation” will be visible to local residents and commuters, as well as to sunset boat tours arranged by Ms. McGill and the Bannerman Castle Trust.

“As the sun goes down, point by point they come on, and they create this new constellation in the sky,” said Ms. McGill, 46, a resident of Beacon, N.Y.

It has taken her three years to put “Constellation” together, working on her own to raise money and organize every aspect of the project, including wrangling 100 people to help her. She heard “no” many times, yet here she was in the homestretch, fine-tuning a major work.

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Melissa McGill's, "Constellation" series on the Hudson River.CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times

The Sherpa guiding Ms. McGill has been Anne Pasternak, the outgoing director of the nonprofit arts organization Creative Time and the incoming director of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, who introduced her to other supporters, including Glenn D. Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art.

When Ms. McGill initially approached her, Ms. Pasternak told her the project had no chance.

“I have a lot conversations with artists who have big dreams,” said Ms. Pasternak, who has developed public art projects as part of her work with Creative Time. “But I said to her I didn’t think she’d ever get it to happen.”

Ms. McGill said she was influenced by Land art and Conceptual art, citing Robert Irwin and Robert Smithson as “touchstones” whose sculptural, often transient works explore art’s relationship with nature. She admired their work at Dia:Beacon, where she once worked as a guide.

“Dia has been my down-the-street museum for nine years,” said Ms. McGill, who said she relished the idea that many viewers will see “Constellation” by chance. One of its primary audiences will be riders of the Metro-North Railroad, whose tracks hug the water on the east side of the Hudson.

Like many passengers, Ms. McGill had found herself wondering about the Bannerman Castle ruins as she zipped by, and its rich history fired her imagination.

“With a ruin, it’s all about what’s missing,” she said. “I wondered what else was here before. Not only the structure, but everything that came before.”

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The lights of “Constellation,” by Melissa McGill, will shine for two hours a night over two years. “They create this new constellation in the sky,” she said.CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times

She learned the story of Francis Bannerman, the Scottish immigrant who made a fortune selling Army and Navy surplus merchandise and built the castle as a warehouse and an advertisement between 1901 and his death in 1918: “Bannerman’s Island Arsenal” is still visible on one wall. He added a residence at one point, which is now crumbling as well.

The island’s colorful history was given a new chapter in April, when investigators found the body of a man who died while on a kayak outing to the castle. But Ms. McGill said she had concentrated on the island’s more distant past as, among other things, a bootlegger outpost and a strategic site during the Revolutionary War. She even went back for inspiration to the Lenape tribe, whose land once included parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and southeastern New York State, including New York City.

She said that the shape formed by the points of light in “Constellation” referred to missing architectural elements of Bannerman Castle and to a Lenape cultural belief in a celestial “white road” equivalent to the Milky Way, called Opi Tamakan. She consulted Hadrien Coumans, co-founder of the Lenape Center in Manhattan, and got his blessing for her artwork.

“The white road connects us between this world and the spirit world,” Mr. Coumans said. “Her piece is a new way of connecting people to their ancestral homeland.”

“Constellation” synthesizes the longtime interests of Ms. McGill. She grew up in Port Washington, N.Y., and sailed in Long Island Sound frequently as a child. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design and studied in Italy for two years, which she said gave her an appreciation of ruins.

Now married with two children, she works as a photo editor to pay the bills, although she regularly makes and shows artwork. But the ambition of this project is far beyond anything she has tried, and it almost did not happen.

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“Constellation,” a work by Melissa McGill at Bannerman Castle on an island in the Hudson River, features 17 tall metal poles topped by sparkling lights.CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times

“I got rejected from so many grants, I didn’t even count them,” Ms. McGill said. “I think people got my proposal and said, ‘No way is she going to pull this off.’ They didn’t even get back to me.”

But then the National Endowment for the Arts came through with $20,000. Ms. McGill has now raised $500,000 of the project’s $650,000 budget, helped by in-kind donations and crowdsourced funds.

Getting permission from the state’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, which controls the island, was the first step. She also sought the blessing and advice of local arts and environmental groups.

“She’s one in a million,” Ms. Pasternak said of Ms. McGill. “It’s so rare for someone to pull this kind of thing off as a single independent artist, in an area that hasn’t had a lot of these kind of projects.”

Ms. McGill’s ideas have won her some highly placed fans in the art world, particularly those with homes in the Hudson Valley.

“What I love about the piece is this combination of whimsy — this idea of creating a new constellation, which will be beautiful — with the uncovering of multiple histories at the same time,” said Mr. Lowry, who has a house in the area. “How fabulous it will be to be driving” on Route 9D at night, he added, “and wonder where the new stars came from?”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Twinkling Ruins of an Island Castle . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe